For those that don't know, a brief personal history:
Several suicide attempts, the most serious being when I bought an antique revolver and some ammo (no paperwork required), tested it, then went home to think about it some more.
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The next day I went to smoke a blunt with a friend so I could at least get high one last time before I died. It was laced with something I think because things got real crazy, rolling blackouts, voices, hallucinations, nothing like weed usually is. My suspicion is PCP, it along with the following events gave me a very strong "place aversion" reaction to even the idea of smoking weed again (this was in 2012, haven't wanted it since).
Anyway I ended up getting arrested, tried to get shot by the cops and take one of their guns in the process. I'm white so they didn't.
Worth mentioning that before this I was a serious alcoholic and chronic pothead, dabbled in other things a fair bit too, all the usual stuff except cocaine, heroin and meth. Never got into those, they seemed to have too high a risk/reward calculation, even for my dumb ass.
After 11 months in jail, I got three years probation, and I've been clean and sober since my arrest. I got slipped a pot brownie once by accident but it didn't cause problems and didn't rekindle any desire to get high again.
Anyway so I fixed all the stuff that society blames for depression and insanity. I dated, I was employed, I sought counseling, I transitioned from the Zyprexa I ended up on (I went through the whole cuckoo's-nest menu of antipsychotics and antidepressants while in jail, can't tell me shit about those I don't know already) to Dexedrine for ADHD which worked really well. Fixed up my short term memory and allowed me to focus much better inward and out. Eventually it did stop causing any improvement so I stopped it, fortunately the benefits appear to have been permanent. Not worth going back every 30 days for a refill.
I saw psychiatrists regularly, worked through my issues with my childhood, my family (only talk to them online now, they're cool but I can't be in the same physical space as them for some reason) and friends etc. Things improved: after 26 years of misery I had 3 ok years.
Despite all that, I didn't seriously abandon thoughts of suicide. Some key problems remained (most notably
these ones) and at the end of the day it just seems like it costs more pain to do anything in this world than the pleasure I receive from it. The only activities where that might not be true in a raw physical sense were either not acceptable to me in terms of personal preference or were morally objectionable. And being evil, knowing what you are doing is wrong and doing it anyway, hurts almost as bad as physical torture.
So while sobriety was important for allowing my brain to resume normal function, the main thing that enabled me to do (which is very important, don't get me wrong) was focus on every source of mental and physical discomfort that I felt and learn to describe it accurately, precisely, articulately, in ways that people cannot fail to understand. Beyond being personally useful, that allows one to talk to people like family, shrinks, etc in ways that get them to shut the hell up and stop offering nonsense platitudes. What people like us feel is real pain and there is absolutely no point at all in asking us to try and do anything or look at anything or talk about anything that doesn't address our central, painful, and both emotionally & physically crippling disagreements with reality.
What that doesn't do is actually solve the problems though. It's like? being sent on a sniper mission with only binoculars.
Once I was able to do that, though, I wrote a 28 page paper of allll my symptoms, how they feel, what they make impossible etc. It could still use some editing but it was arranged in sections with bullet-point lists and stuff, easier to read than to experience I think. Maybe not by much... anyway I ended up having to switch to a new psychiatrist later and it was nice to be able to say "here's my shit, we can cut the crap that normally takes a few months of visits. Can you help me?"
Unfortunately he couldn't and he wasn't even able to argue with my formal-logic structured argument for suicide as a valid option for me. In short, it would be a permanent solution to a permanent problem, not the rash brute-force response to confusion that it's often portrayed as.
So I was left with the cold reflection that my conscious experience is not normal relative to other people's, and it did not look like that was going to change. I knew that on a basic level long ago, before I ever actually tried to die, I think, but I do see some value in being able to explain it to people and articulate it to myself. One of the difficulties I had in my earlier suicide attempts was a very distinct feeling that my whole self was not on board with the decision: perfectly understandable, the animal survival instinct is strong.
The problem is that it is precisely that survival instinct that enables incarceration, slavery, torture, it is what makes hell truly possible. What we should fear is not death but rather a shitty life.
The animal must agree, the spinal cord must be on board or ye shall never cut the cord. So must the frontal lobes, the midbrain and so on. For example, on one attempt I was gonna jump off the golden gate bridge in SF. Onto the rocks, so there was no chance of survival. It was very weird: my upper body was ready, I grabbed the rails, I tensed to hop it, and my legs just wouldn't work. Like they locked up and were all "nooo we have things to do still!" I was very upset. Still am, really, I've been through a lot of dumb shit since then and my point is my mind hasn't changed.
ANYWAY it became clear that sadly I can't talk to the animal. You can't convince it that simply eating, breathing, farting, etc is not an existence sufficient to justify the misery that is required simply to survive even in a place as comfortable as the United States of America. That's just what it does, it's a machine, it's programmed, that's why people are really so durable, why we live on even paralyzed etc. It's a blessing and a curse. What the higher mind needs is a reason to stay on the ride, the animal brain is the ride.
I have not been enjoying the ride. If I wrote down all the specific reasons why, this post would be even longer. You all have your own reasons. What I decided to do is demand happiness, excitement, but also rational behavior. I will not let the animal trick me into doing crazy shit (which it tries to do all the damn time) so I get arrested or committed or married or something stupid like that. Those are all just life-support situations to enable it to shit more. Total waste of consciousness, not worth my time.
Yet existence was so painful and the animal so hyperactive that I couldn't seem to get it to let me work on more wholesome things like school or a job and LORD did I try my best. I'm an intelligent, handy guy and yet most of my personal projects, I noticed, were designed around enabling a more convenient and painless suicide or at least a solid disconnect from society at some point in the future: I literally couldn't think of anything else if I had more than 5 minutes of free time. By way of example, I was making a nitre bed to be able to produce black powder from my feces to kill myself that way in case I could never get my hands on a gun again due to the criminal record I now had. I started smoking? (I like cloves, the DJARUM brand is common, they don't smell as bad and last longer) just to make my mind shut up and also hoping that I would get cancer bad enough to be eligible for physician-assisted suicide. I designed a slam-fire shotgun that would be trigger-operated and could be made almost entirely from Home Depot parts with simple tools.
Needless to say, all of that was a huge, distracted waste of time. The fact was that as long as I felt trapped in a miserable life I would not be able to think of anything except "what do I do if this doesn't get better!?" But all my exit strategies were taking so long to bear fruit, I was only getting older, it was mostly getting harder.
So I cashed in my retirement account and decided to do my midlife crisis early since I don't care if I get old or not. I've been continuously employed since I was 16 and had been funding my Roth IRA since then, made some good cash on TSLA and RTN and renewables. Dumped it early, paid the Fed 10%, now I don't owe them anything either. Moral weight off my mind and financial weight in my wallet.
Then I made a gun, a real one. I recommend using an 80% receiver if you can't pass a background check: it's pretty easy to mill out and get working, though it is quite expensive to get all the parts. You can order it even in Cali, though I moved to Arizona anyway just to avoid potential hassle. It's cheaper out there, less frantic in the air.
The gun is what saved my life. Being ABLE to commit suicide, actually having it right there, at the push of a button, a threat with teeth behind it to put on the table any time the other portions of my brain make my life difficult for no reason. It would be a shitty way to treat real people or animals but it seems to be the only way to keep this strange, foreign, hostile, disobedient section of my mind in line. Not to mention, what's the point in working to build a life for yourself, anything that you're proud of, if you can't defend it?
It's never more than a sandcastle until you pour that concrete reality into the mold. Your body is a vessel and also a key: it's your only way to access what you put into this world. If you lose it, all you have built is lost.
When the voices won't stop, when my physical feelings won't line up with what I want to do today I grab the loaded Glock, I put it to my temple and I say "Listen motherfucker, do you wanna be in charge? Do you want to run the narrative today? Do you want your hands on my wheeality and your voice on the microphone? IF you do, you gotta do the whole thing, I'm not helping you with your bullshit, and the first thing you gotta do is stop me from pulling the trigger."
Life is just not worth living with that kind of crap going on in your mind. It really isn't, and none of the meds help, being in jail doesn't help, drugs and alcohol make it worse but just make it harder to remember. It's slavery, plain and simple.
Do not tolerate it. Death is preferable. 50/50 chance that it's better or worse, that's better math than a 70-80% certainty that your life will continue to be equally shitty as the nigh-100% of it that was shit before.
Beyond being able to defend yourself, you must also go vegan, by the way, or your karma will keep you in hell forever. If you feel like you're being herded around in a pointless existence it's because your beef and bacon feels that way. You're paying for their suffering, and you are what you eat. That's what you vote for in the existence of others and it comes right back around.
I'm not kiddin', that shit is for real. It was all that allowed me to finally really believe that I deserved better, because I was better. If you're not, you don't. Not trying to be sanctimonious but just imagine that Aliens or God loves you the same way you love dogs and doesn't really care any more than you do if millions of you get killed and harvested in China.
He shares your suffering on Instagram with the other Gods and that's the end of it. If you really want to improve your life you gotta be the bomb-sniffing dog or the cat that becomes a lawyer and argues for his freedom because he really doesn't kill birds anymore.
You also need to be sure you have a way out so you never get trapped in a life, a conscious experience like what you have again. Absolutely Mandatory.
Three ingredients to freedom: 1) Thou shalt not tolerate slavery 2) Thou shalt not be a slave to others 3) Thou shalt enslave thyself and control all that ye do as far as ye can see.
Freedom isn't always happy, never free, but at least if you're miserable you can begin to understand why and do something about it. Whatever that something ends up being.
I hope this helps someone.
